Who know what stuff does - no help or FAQ's

[FluffyChicken]

So what does everything do, I've been around the DIMES site and cannot find any FAQ's or information and all the help in the client is greyed out.


- Graph page, self explanatory but what doe the Get info do and where do the pictures get sent?
- Messages seems pointless other than for debugging (which is turned off) ?
- Statistics, say nothing other than Personal and General text ?


- Whats the traceroute for ?


- Window -> Preferences greyed out it never used to be, how to I get back in
..... EDIT:Looking at wrong thing found Agent - Properties:EDIT




- I remember in the preferences something about UDP/ICMP which should I use ?
- What and how does the slider I also remeber do and what the best position how do I decide ?


A client with no Help files and a Website with no help either, these guys must be

[black_civic55]

well first off they're still in Beta, its a brand new project. They need time to settle down.

-Get info, it finds the I.P. Country, ISP and other things for the tracerouts that aren't done automatically.

-Messages pretty much just lets ya know the client is still running.

-Stats screen hasn't ever worked in any of the versions. guess thats something down the road.

-UDP/ICMP, Use whatever your computer can do. I can't do UDP so i have ICMP selected

Others im not sure about

[FluffyChicken]

BETA ?

No where on the site does it say beta

[black_civic55]

well their newest client is no longer "beta" although it still has a lot to be worked on. I believe they issued it as a normal client because of all the new people joining and didn't want everyone to have to continue downloading beta clients. There will probly be a new client sometime around the corner though. I'm pretty sure of that.

[meep]

Yes it is a bit rusty at the moment - BUT remember this is a new approach to "mapping the internet", using the DC approach via remote agents to create a realistic map of the net.

They have come on leaps and bounds over the last few weeks, no reason for them to keep on improving.

To answer one of your questions, the sliders allow you to permit the client/agent to use more internet connection resources in order to gather results.

[FluffyChicken]

So best setup (for the project, not your computer )

Repeat rate as low as possible, and bandwidth just bellow you upload rate.



Then alter the repeat so your computer doesn't get sudden internet blockages (which i'm getting with the lowest setup) or maybe i'll drop the bandwidth a little more (~80% like you do with P2P software)
Still some help and info page somewhere on their site would be nice

[meep]

Yes, i agree more info is always good.

Especially when it comes to tweaking the settings to suit an individuals internet connection speeds so as not to intrude on performance.

Seeing as we have the largest group of active peeps in DIMES and the biggest hitters, perhaps people can post questions / answers here so as to build up a good FAQ that will prove useful to both team members and other DIMES members?

[black_civic55]

sounds like a great idea. I'll also send an email over to eran and ask him about a FAQ page and some other stuff.

[FluffyChicken]

They've said they should be able to squeeze some info time in very shortly

But the lower the repeat rate the more measurement.
The bandwith is purely for communication to DIMES themselve, for stats communication, work done, work pattern ect.
So set it to a low level will stop sudden burst and internet stallage.

[meep]

Are you sure that the bandwidth slider does not impact measurements completed per hour?

[FluffyChicken]

Not directly, but there maybe a slight side effect. (no measurments are taken while the info is being sent ... "I assume")
So the longer it takes to send, the longer it'll tkae to get back to measurments.



In Dimes forum a post by Eran (after release of 0.4)
Basically the situation is like this:
1. The measurements themselves take very little bandwidth but the bandwidth usage is bursty. FAPP you are not supposed to feel it. The measurements are rate limited and the maximum rate is 4 per minute.
2. The transfer rate to and from the server is controlled by an option in the network properties of the agent, where you can choose the (average) amount of bandwidth you want to provide the agent when it needs to send data to the server.
3. The only thing that is not rate limited is the posting of screenshots to the gallery, but this is user-initated, so you don't have to use this option.
Cheers,
Eran